In his Christian apologetics, Lewis creates certainty in his reader, calls for a revival of humanity, and combines imagination with a rational method. Through an overarching tension between concrete worldly experience and conceptions of transcendence, Lewis's apologetics have been able to maintain accessibility to a varied audience.

Giles Firmin (1613/14-1697) was one of many migrants to the Bay Colony in the early 1630s that returned to England in the mid-1640s. Settling in rural Essex, Firmin received Presbyterian orders in 1648, but he spent the remainder of his career attempting to reconcile the godly to one another and to combat the influence of the sects, in particular Baptists and Quakers. Firmin was by no means one of the canonical figures among his contemporaries, but his oeuvre is of interest for three reasons: 1) Firmin tends to stake out positions that mediate between polarized theological and ecclesiological positions among the godly. Rather than identifying with a particular party, Firmin tends to present himself as a New England divine interested in the Reformation of England. His positions are thus generally creative extensions and harmonizations of positions within the Puritan tradition. 2) Firmins writing career neatly maps on the later Stuart period in English history, and for that reason his engagement in several of the controversies convulsing the godly during that time period offer an excellent opportunity to write an episodic, concise history of later Stuart Puritanism-cum-Dissent. 3) Likewise, close contextualization of Firmins work makes possible the close examination of the thought of more prominent figures of the period that have been badly understudied or poorly understood, especially Zachary Crofton, John Humfrey, John Gauden, Vincent Alsop, Thomas Grantham, Henry Danvers, and Richard Davis. The indirect result of the dissertation is thus not only an enhanced understanding of Firmin but also of the transitions within Puritan and Dissenting thought in the later Stuart period.

Can American medicine responsibly integrate patients religious beliefs into their end-of-life care? What is the clinical ethics consultants role in this process? In this dissertation, I attempt to answer these questions by investigating the religious, moral, and epistemic values that influence both 1) the commitments of the clinician and 2) the beliefs of the person hoping for a miracle (the invocator). My investigation identifies and explores a fundamental tension between the invocators religious imagination and the healthcare workers clinical imagination. To help alleviate this tension, the clinical ethics consultant should begin by identifying the different ways in which miracle-invocators employ miracle-language. I argue that miracle-language functions in three distinct (yet overlapping) ways: a political attempt to wrest decision-making authority away from the medical team, a doxological statement of faith in Providence, or an existential expression of inquiry into relationships between self, God, and world. By expressing empathy and openly exploring the moral values that undergird the invocators hope for a miracle, the clinical ethics consultant can help medicine recognize the interdependence between overall well-being and religious commitment.

This dissertation highlights the modes of existence (autonomy, relationality, and heteronomy) of the threefold contextual choices that readers privilege in their perception of the self and the other/Other. Examining Pauls vision of love in 1 Corinthians, we find that the religious (or heteronomous) dimension of love has been overlooked in critical biblical studies. While, out of their contexts, traditional biblical scholars render Pauls love as theologically and ethically authoritative (for individual believers; cf. autonomy), recently an increasing number of scholars treat it as rhetorically and ideologically utilitarian (in community and social life; cf. relationality). However, if honor and shame are pivotal values in ancient Mediterranean cultures, where honor has felt (in religious experience; cf. heteronomy), claimed (by individuals; cf. autonomy), and paid (in social relations; cf. relationality) aspects, then we must not sideline the heteronomous aspect of Pauls love. Coming from a group-oriented and honor-and-shame Chinese cultures in Malaysia, where everyone is always already interrelated, we argue through a structural semiotic exegesis that for Paul love is cruciform and as such charismatic, typological, eschatological, and performative. From a communal perspective, these non-objectifying features of Pauls love are a religious experience expressed in the intransitive and non-reflexive mode of middle voice where the subject, object, and receiver in the giving and receiving of love cannot be objectified. In light of this middle voice (cf. heteronomy), Pauls notion of the body of Christ as parts beyond a part (1 Cor. 12:27b) embodies a love that conceptualizes and configures plurality in the figure of common good without marginalizing singularity. In the middle-voice mode, singularity and plurality are a dynamic and hyphenated relation, just as the body of Christ co-arises with individual body members. Thus our structural semiotic analysis of the Lords Supper (11:17-34), the idol food conflict (8:111:1), and the spiritual gifts problem (12:114:40) shows that Paul coherently undergirds these issues with a cruciform love that deconstructs the Corinthian believers attempt to objectify their knowledge into a system that pigeonholes the believers relationship with the other/Other.

Thesis (doctoral)--Leipzig, 1823 (Mauritio Guilielmo Drobisch, respondent) / Signatures: A-C⁴. Text in Latin. Includes bibliographical references.

Inaug.-Diss.--Ludwig-Universitat zu Giessen. / Lebenslauf.

Editor's Thesis (Ph. D.)--Columbia University, 1942. / Translation of Chtenii︠a︡ o Bogochelovechestve. Editor's name covered by label: Peter Peter Zouboff. Published also without thesis note, under title: Vladimir Solovyev's Lectures on Godmanhood. Vita. Bibliography: p. 227-233.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Syracuse University, 2008. / "Publication number: AAT 3323065."

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Toronto, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references.

Editor's Thesis (Ph. D.)--Columbia University, 1942. / Translation of Chtenii︠a︡ o Bogochelovechestve. Editor's name covered by label: Peter Peter Zouboff. Published also without thesis note, under title: Vladimir Solovyev's Lectures on Godmanhood. Vita. Bibliography: p. 227-233.